* AWESOME perks - the Culinary Department is superb. There's an onsite gym, a good coffee bar (for caffeine addicts), and, obviously, the dogs * There are many good people at Zynga. * MY personal work-life balance is pretty good, BUT this is HIGHLY dependent on WHICH team you work on. Many game teams are working LONG hours, including weekends, whereas non-game teams are putting in the necessary 40 hour / week.

Cons

* The so-called Zynga speed? It's mostly hurry up & wait, especially on the back-end of Zynga's infrastructure & platform groups. (For game studios, it's break-neck speed). * We shifted direction too many times, and since we have priorities only for a given quarter (which is what your bonuses are based upon), making GOOD long term decisions for the company is not the priority. Projects that were a priority one quarter are dropped in the next; making your work meaningless. * Too many cooks in the kitchen; many teams overlap in doing the SAME THING and don't trust that other groups will do a good job. A lot of developer time & cycles are wasted * The HR process of hiring people is a joke. It takes FOREVER to get anyone through the interview process (let alone hired), and you lose a lot of talent. They are more interested in putting on high-school pep rallies for people who have "leveled up" or are being recognized for their contribution. (Seriously, they had high school cheerleader outfits one quarter...) Make "People Resources" actually about helping the people at Zynga...and not the high school squad team.

Advice to Management

PICK a direction, stick with it, and give people a chance to do the RIGHT thing for Zynga instead of trying to meet objectives that change on the wind. Streamline the whole new IP process; make platform & game services ACTUAL working services that are easily integrated by a game studio instead of the monsters they are today.

* Perks and benefits; * free meals (but they were much better couple of years ago); * still a lot of bright engineers and artists

Cons

* top and mid management (they just don't know what they want, no long term vision, nobody wants to take responsibility); * strategy changing every time; * permanent reorg (probably good if you want new manager every month); * Pincus: he ruined a lot of good games. His smartest decision was resignation; * leadership principles just don't work; * fast follow approach for new games, no original IP; * no central tech (almost all central tech attempts, including zcloud, failed, thanks to Cadir); * stupid strategic decisions (zynga.com disconnected from facebook, 2nd version of everything) * best engineers leaving; * lack of execution, some games in development for years without any results;